Manfred Spieker
The language of the culture of death
Lecture at the Conference of the spokespersons of the Council of the European
Bishop´s Conferences (CCEE) on the subject of „Ecclesia in Europa“, 13th of June
2013 in Bucarest
I. The Culture of death
The language of the „Culture of death“ is full of ambivalences. By its central terms it is
sending signals which produce life-accepting associations and at the same time mask its
intentions against life. But before we are going to examine the language the „Culture of
death“ uses, we have to take a closer look at the term “Culture of death” itself. During
the Pontificate of John Paul II., and especially in his Encyclical about the value and the
inviolability of human life, „Evangelium Vitae“, it plays a key role.1 The term itself is a
sort of hermaphrodite. It unites seemingly incompatible subjects. Everybody who uses
the term must reckon with the objection, whether it should not better be called
„Unculture of death“. The term culture, from the Latin term „colere“ (cultivate, care
for), means formed by man in contrast to the uncultivated nature which often is opposed
to man. But the term goes far beyond the cultivation. It also means the humanization of
the society, the refinement of the social relationships. In the Catholic Social Doctrine it
includes all human activity in economy and politics, in science and arts. By this
cultivation, the Second Vatican Council says in „Gaudium et Spes“, man unfolds the
work of the Creator and does not only pursue and fulfil the things and the society, but
also himself.2
Death, on the contrary, is for everybody who does not accept it as a gateway to life the
opposite of culture. It is part of nature which cannot be surmounted by human activity.
So, “Culture of death“ is a bulky term. It combines incompatible things – culture, the
human activity and forming, and death, the end of all activity. The term has nothing to
do with ars moriendi, the art to die performed by a mature person who faces death in
conscious and calm manner or who even welcomes him as a brother like St. Francis of
Assisi does. And it has nothing to do with murder or manslaughter existing among
people since Cain has killed Abel, and on which always laid the curse of being a crime.
„Culture of death“ rather means a behaviour on the one hand and social and legal
structures on the other hand which strive for making killing socially acceptable, by
camouflaging it as a medical service or a social assistance, or by justifying it with
regard to a promising research. The Culture of death wants to deliberate killing from the
curse of being a crime. Since about 40 years it has extended in the Western societies. It
includes bioethical problematical fields which exist since man has existed, like abortion
1
2
Johannes Paul II., Evangelium Vitae (25.3.1995), 24, 26, 28, 50, 64, 87, 95. Auch das nachsynodale
Apostolische Schreiben Johannes Pauls II. Ecclesia in Europa 9 und 95 erwähnt ihn.
II. Vatikanisches Konzil, Gaudium et Spes 34, 35 und 53.
1
and euthanasia, as well as problematical fields which arose with the artificial
insemination in the seventies of the last century, like embryonic stem cell research,
cloning, Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis and the assisted reproduction itself. It uses
an ambivalent language which has a sedating effect on society.
The examples, by which the ambivalences of that language are illustrated in the
following, are taken from the German language. But I am sure that the „Culture of
death” is acting similarly in other languages. It uses terms which produce positive
associations at first sight, for example terms like right, human right, dignity, freedom,
choice, assistance, solidarity, health, therapy and self-destination. The positive
associations produced by these terms shall make killing acceptable. Only at second sight
it becomes clear that these terms are magic hoods behind which mostly the opposite is
hiding: The disregard of the right to live and the dignity of those who do not have a
voice, the implementation of the will of the strong against the weak, the bloodless
removal of unborn and dying people who are a burden to the society. Not only are social
pressure groups like the abortion lobby using those magic hoods but also the legislative
and the courts.
II. Abortion
The legalization of abortion that, apart from the Communist dictatorships, in the free
part of Europe began in 1967 in Great Britain, a few years after having introduced
contraceptive hormone preparations (1960), was realized in the German Bundestag with
all four great reforms of the abortion criminal law (1974, 1976, 1992, and 1995), with
the expressed objective to improve the protection of life and to reduce the number of
abortions. The laws by which the last two reforms had been adopted were called
“Pregnant and family assistance law” (1992) and “Pregnant and family assistance
amendment law“ (1995). Both laws did not offer any assistance, neither to pregnant
women nor to families or unborn children. They only answer the purpose to legalize the
priority of the pregnant woman’s will to abort over the right of the child to live. The
titles of the laws were magic hoods. The fact that all reforms missed the objective to
improve the protection of life and to reduce the number of abortions, can be proven by
the abortion statistics, introduced in 1972 in the German Democratic Republic and in
1976 in the Federal Republic of Germany, and by the increasing social and judicial
acceptance of abortion since the first reform 40 years ago.3
In the German society, the abortion lobby is gathering in an organization which calls
itself “Pro Familia” and which is part of the worldwide pro-abortion organization
“Planned Parenthood“. These names are magic hoods, too. The objective of these
organizations is not helping families, is not a planned and responsible parenthood but
the legalization of abortion. “Pro Familia” for example disseminates leaflets which
describe the medical procedure of an abortion in a language where every indication of
the child respectively the embryo is avoided. The procedure of the abortion is described
3
Manfred Spieker, Der verleugnete Rechtsstaat. Anmerkungen zur Kultur des Todes in Europa, 2. Aufl.
Paderborn 2011, S. 17ff.
2
as „suction of pregnancy tissue“, as „removing the content of the uterus” or, according
to drug abortion, as “expulsion of the pregnancy”.4 Stultification in the garment of
information.
The German abortion criminal law is a special form in order to realize the „Culture of
death“. In Paragraph 218 it prohibits abortion as a criminal offence, but in Paragraph
218a it regulates the decriminalizing exceptions. The exceptions are suppressing the
normal case. A person who wants to have an abortion has no difficulties to find a
physician willing to perform the abortion and to get tax funded financiering. The centre
of these exceptions is the so-called pregnancy conflict counselling. In case of abortion
the pregnant women remains unpunished during the first twelve weeks after conception
if she has proven to the physician by a certificate that she has received advice at least
three days before having the abortion. The dialectical cleverness of this counselling
regulation consists in the fact that the advice certificate shall document an advice in
favour of the life protection of the unborn child but at the same time is the necessary
condition of his unpunished abortion. The fact that the pregnant woman has a right to
receive the advice certificate even without having received advice has been established
by the German Federal Constitutional Court in a judgement from 27th of October 1998.5
The advice certificate converts the criminal act of killing an innocent person into a
medical service. It is the base of a contract under civil law between the abortionist and
the pregnant woman for the purpose of killing her child. So, for the abortionist it is a
licence to kill. It grants the priority of the self-destination-right of the pregnant woman
over the right of her unborn child to live. In the society’s perception the abortion
criminal law has become an abortion law. The abortion statistics, also a particularity of
German criminal law, serves more the camouflage than the information. Once a quarter
and every March for the previous year they inform us, mostly with a reasserting
undertone that abortions have reduced again. The “Culture of death“ knows how to
avoid the question about the demographic reasons for the reduction and the statistically
not included abortions on the one hand and the addition of the total amount of abortions
since the introduction of the statistics on the other hand (until the 31st of December
2012: 5.483.201).
This dialectical regulation of pregnancy conflict consultation also brought the Catholic
Church in Germany into a state of deep conflict. The majority of the German bishops
and catholic lay persons defended this regulation against Pope John Paul II. and the
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, with
the argument that it offered the chance to convince a pregnant woman willing to abort
of having her baby. The critics of the counselling regulation objected that by
participating in this counselling system the Church was drawn into the “Culture of
death”. Church must not base its advice offer on legal enforcement. After a four year
long struggle with the German bishops, in September 1999 Pope John Paul II. ordered
4
5
Familienplanungszentrum Pro Familia Hamburg, Hrsg., Ich will noch kein Kind…Infos zum
Schwangerschaftsabbruch, Hamburg 2004, S. 6, 13f. und 15. Ähnliche Broschüren auch bei Pro Familia
Bremen und Pro Familia Frankfurt.
BVerfGE 98, 324f.
3
that the Church’s counselling offices were no longer allowed to issue the certificate.6
But the conflict and the continuing pregnancy counselling with the certificate, offered
by the association of catholic lay persons „Donum Vitae“, is paralyzing the catholic
church in Germany up to today, with regard to the engagement for the protection of life,
compared to the churches in many other countries, for example Poland, Ireland, Spain,
Italy and the USA. There are neither pro-life-secretaries nor cooperation with the prolife-movement or support of the yearly March for Life in Berlin. The „Week for life“,
celebrated every year together with the Lutheran Church in Germany, has degenerated
to a simple invitation to “Be friendly to each other”. A public support of the collection
of signatures “One of us”, organized all over European Union in order to improve the
legal protection of the embryo, which was given by Pope Francis on 12th of May, 2013,7
is no matter for the German Bishop’s Conference.
On international level the legalization of abortion is propagated by several suborganizations of the United Nations. Here, the magic hood the „Culture of death“ uses is
the right of reproductive health. For the first time this term was used in the Action
Programme of the World Population Conference 1994 in Cairo. The World Conference
on Women 1995 in Peking also took it up. But it is true that both conferences still held
on the statement that abortion was no method of family planning. And apart from that,
the Action programmes of these conferences do not have the character of being
contracts of international law but only that of recommendations. But in the fight of
legalizing a right of reproductive health including the right of abortion on international
law level, several sub-organizations of the UNO and NGOs are active, like the Human
Rights Council, The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health
Organization (WHO), the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW) which plays a central role in the fight to legalize abortion, and as a
new organization UN-Women, the „Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment
of Women”, founded on 2nd of July, 2010. And like a motor behind these organizations
stands the International Planned Parenthood Federation whose action programme gives
absolute priority to that fight. The argumentation of these organizations uses another
magic hood. It is called maternal mortality. They claim that maternal mortality is
especially high if abortion is “unsafe”. Unsafe abortions are illegal abortions; that is
why they say that the reduction of maternal mortality requires the legalization of
abortion. On the UN General Assembly on 24th of October, 2011, these demands were
controversially discussed and not least rejected by the representative of the Holy See,
Archbishop Francis Assisi Chullikatt. 8
6
7
8
Manfred Spieker, Kirche und Abtreibung in Deutschland. Ursachen und Verlauf eines Konflikts, 2.
Aufl. Paderborn 2008, S. 132ff.
Ansprache beim Regina Coeli am 12.5.2013, in: L’Osservatore Romano (deutsch) vom 17.5.2013, S. 1.
Manfred Spieker, Missbrauch der UNO – Der globale Kampf um die Legalisierung der Abtreibung, in:
Bernward Büchner/Claudia Kaminski/Mechthild Löhr, Hrsg., Abtreibung – ein neues Menschenrecht?,
Krefeld 2012, S. 83ff.
4
III. Euthanasia
Concerning euthanasia, the „Culture of death“ has got a little more problems in
Germany than in some neighbour states like the Benelux states – at least with regard to
the legislative. During the National Socialist Dictatorship, euthanasia had been realized
to a large extent. It aimed at the removal of disabled persons, incurable ill and weak
persons whose life was considered to be unworthy to live and a burden for the people’s
community. Their killing was declared an act of love and compassion or, by Hitler
himself in a decree 1939, a death out of mercy. But the German society has got fewer
problems with euthanasia, if you just do not call it euthanasia but “active assisted
dying”. In demoscopic inquiries this form of dying is regularly supported by about two
thirds. At the beginning of 2013, the German Bundestag for the first time discussed
draft legislations concerning the assisted suicide. The liberal Minister of Justice only
wanted to prohibit a commercial assistance to suicide. Such a partial prohibition would
eo ipso have legalized every non-commercial assistance to suicide – a typical strategy of
the „Culture of death“: In the garment of prohibition of killing, the legalization of
killing is established and, apart from that, the commercial organizations of assisted
suicide quickly changed their legal status into charitable associations. For the present,
no law was achieved.
The main argument the „Culture of death“ is using according to euthanasia is the right
of self-destination. Everybody has got the right to decide on his death himself. Hans
Küng and Walter Jens call that „dying in human dignity“. 9 Nobody, as the liberal
deputy Dick Marty from Switzerland said at the Council of Europe, had „the right to
impose the duty to continue life under unbearable suffering or agony on a terminally ill
or dying person, if he himself had insistently expressed his wish to end it“.10 That is
why active assisted dying should be legalized. The Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe did not follow that suggestion up to now. The “Culture of death”
suggests that euthanasia served the ending of suffering and the realization of the right of
self-destination. It removes the suffering by removing the suffering person. It ignores
the prohibition of killing innocent persons and by this the condition of legitimacy of
constitutional democracy. In order to present euthanasia as a result of self-destination
and even as a service for common welfare, the “Culture of death” uses some auxiliary
arguments. A first additional argument has got anthropological character: The capacity
to communicate is declared a constituting character of human existence. If the ability to
communicate has been extinguished or is no longer perceptible at first sight, like in case
of vegetative state or certain forms of dementia, that person consequently is no longer
considered to be a human being and his killing no longer as the killing of a human
being. That is why every adult, as a sociologist says, should deposit a will of euthanasia
for the case of total or partial loss of his communication ability, by which the
responsible persons are bound.11 Another anthropological auxiliary argument is the
definition of patients who are not able to communicate as “human Non-Persons“ or
9
Walter Jens/Hans Küng, Menschenwürdig sterben, München 1996.
Council of Europe, Dokument 9898, Ziffer 61.
11
Klaus Feldmann, Tod und Gesellschaft. Eine soziologische Betrachtung von Sterben und Tod,
Frankfurt 1990, S. 236.
10
5
„sentient property“.12 Then you can deal with those „Non-Persons” like you deal with
objects.
Finally, the „Culture of death“ uses additional demographical and financial arguments
when talking about euthanasia and assisted suicide. With a really brutal frankness they
invite to commit an „altruistic suicide” and declare it a “last human act of solidarity”.
They say it is true that a person willing to commit suicide should take the negative
consequences of self-killing on his social surrounding into consideration. But it could be
expected from him that „in case of an incurable and highly care-intensive disease he
senses the emotional burden, the utilization of time and financial burden of his existence
for his family and friends. We are not only responsible of the negative social
consequences when we depart this world but of course also for those of continuing our
life“.13 Such invitations to commit socially compatible suicide destroy the relationship
between the physician and the patient. The patient turns from a suffering subject who
receives compassion and solidarity by society into an object being a burden for society.
So, it is not the patient who can expect the compassion by society but society expects
compassion by the patient. “Who wants to continue life under those circumstances?
That way, the right to self-killing inevitably becomes a duty to do it“.14
The practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands and Belgium shows that the idea that
euthanasia only is realized in case of voluntary, informed and insistent wish expressed
by the patient is an illusion, and also the idea that the physicians would fulfil the legal
duty to inform the regional controlling commissions about all euthanasia cases.
Although the percentage of the patients who have been killed without their consent, in
2001 still about 20 percent, seems to have reduced according to the latest inquiry in
2010 to about the half, it is a great problem.15 And the fact that euthanasia also is
realized without any consent can be proven by the Groningen Protocol from 2004,
which allows the killing of severely disabled newborn and seriously ill children in their
first year of life. Here, the “Culture of death“ uses the term „Abortion after birth”. The
example shows two facts: On the one hand the term shall maintain the illusion that the
killing of newborn children is no euthanasia because legal euthanasia requires consent
newborn babies are eo ipso not able to give, and on the other hand it shows the
acceptance of abortion. In 2012, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argued the
12
13
14
15
Wesley J. Smith, „Human Non-Person”. Terri Schiavo, bioethics, and our future, in: National Review
vom 29.3.2005, in: www.nationalreview.com/smithw/smith200503290755.asp
Dagmar Fenner, Ist die Institutionalisierung und Legalisierung der Suizid-Beihilfe gefährlich? Eine
kritische Analyse der Gegenargumente, in: Ethik in der Medizin, 19. Jg. (2007), S. 210; Manfred von
Lewinski, Ausharren oder gehen? Für und wider die Freiheit zum Tode, München 2008, S. 186-204.
Robert Spaemann, Es gibt kein gutes Töten, in: Robert Spaemann/Thomas Fuchs, Töten oder sterben
lassen? Worum es in der Euthanasiedebatte geht, Freiburg 1997, S. 20; Johannes Rau, Wird alles gut?
Für einen Fortschritt nach menschlichem Maß, Frankfurt 2001, S. 27f. „Wo das Weiterleben nur eine
von zwei legalen Optionen ist, wird jeder rechenschaftspflichtig, der anderen die Last seines
Weiterlebens aufbürdet“.
Bregje D. Onwuteaka-Philipsen, u. a., Trends in end-of-life practices before and after the enactment of
the euthanasia law in the Netherlands from 1990 to 2010; a repeated cross-sectional survey, in: The
Lancet online July 11, 2012, S. 4f. Die Autoren sprechen von 9%, allerdings hat fast ein Viertel der
Ärzte, die Patienten durch Euthanasie getötet haben, ihre Entscheidung weder mit dem Patienten noch
mit Angehörigen oder anderen Ärzten diskutiert. Zu den Zahlen und Untersuchungen aus früheren
Jahren vgl. M. Spieker, Der verleugnete Rechtsstaat, a. a. O., S. 54f.
6
case for extending the „abortion after birth“ to healthy newborn babies because they still
do not have the moral status of a person. „Merely potential people cannot be harmed by
not being brought into existence…since non-persons have no moral rights to live, there
are no reasons for banning after-birth abortions“.16 These experiences from the
Netherlands show that euthanasia changes the self-conception of health professions and
destroys the confidence of the patient toward the physician. Physicians and nurses who
become killing engineers – for that new profession the Swiss Academy of Medical
Sciences recommends separate professional training for the purpose of quality insurance
– encounter distrust among the patients. Already in 2001, when the draft legislation was
discussed in the Dutch Parliament, the Dutch Bishops had warned against that
development.17 The so-called „Credo-Card“18 and the increasing request from Dutch
people for care and retirement homes beyond the German frontier are documenting this
distrust. Instead of extending the radius of self-destination, the legalization of
euthanasia increases the fear of heteronomy.
IV. Embryonic stem cell research, PGD and PND
In 2000, a wide bioethical debate started concerning those problems of biomedicine
whose condition is the artificial insemination, after James Thomson at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison in 1998 for the first time had succeeded in isolating embryonic
stem cells. The aim of the research is to develop, from embryonic stem cells which are
able to multiply at will in an appropriate media, tissue and organs which promise
therapies for up to now incurable diseases. But at the beginning of winning a stem cell
line there is the destruction of the embryo. The stem cell research uses the so-called
spared or orphaned embryos who occur during the assisted reproduction. The objection
of the bioethics and the constitutional law that no therapy, not even the most promising,
may justify the killing of an embryo, even the one with the less chance to be transferred
into the uterus, encounters opposition. The „Culture of death“ does not only use the
promise to develop therapies for until today incurable diseases but also some lingual
distinctions which shall give the impression that the spared embryos are no persons, that
means no legal subjects who are protected by the constitutional warranty of human
dignity and the right to live but objects which have to serve the society and the research
as a resource. The embryo in vitro, that is an embryo without uterus, is „human life“,
but still not a human, not even a “becoming human”. 19 According to that, he is no
16
17
18
19
Alberto Giubilini/Francesca Minerva, After-birth abortion: why should the baby life? In: Journal of
Medical Ethics Online First published on February 23, 2012 as 10.1136/medethics-2011-100411, S. 3.
Vgl. z. B. die Erklärung des Vorsitzenden der Niederländischen Bischofskonferenz Adrianus Simonis,
Care during Suffering and Dying vom 7.4.2000, in: Euthanasia and Human Dignity. A Collection of
Contributions by the Dutch Catholic Bishop’s Conference to the Legislative Procedure 1983-2001,
hrsg. von P. Kohnen und G. Schumacher, Utrecht/Leuven 2002, S. 152.
Die Credo-Card ist ein Ausweis mit dem Namen des Inhabers und der Aufschrift „Maak mij niet dood,
Doktor“. Er signalisiert im Falle der Äußerungsunfähigkeit, dass der Inhaber in keinem Fall
euthanasiert werden will.
Johannes Fischer, Pflicht des Lebensschutzes nur für Menschen. Eine theologische Betrachtung der
Embryonenforschung, in: Neue Züricher Zeitung vom 12.9.2001; ders., Vom Etwas zum Jemand.
Warum Embryonenforschung mit dem christlichen Menschenbild vereinbar ist, in: Zeitzeichen, 3. Jg.
(2002), Heft 1, S. 11ff. Hartmut Kreß, PID, der Status von Embryonen und embryonale Stammzellen,
7
embryo but a “pre-embryo“. He has an „abstract“, but no „concrete“ possibility to
become a human.20 All those distinctions have the purpose to deny to the embryos in the
respective lower status of being a person their dignity protection and their right to live,
and to create from that property claims by the society for research and therapy projects.
Like in the debate about euthanasia the „Culture of death“ uses anthropological
auxiliary arguments: The ability to communicate and to feel or personal interests are
declared the constituting character of human existence. The embryo in vitro, they say,
still does not live under communicative circumstances, still is no “partner for
discourse“,21 still has no interests,22 and still has no feelings.23 Consequently, he is no
person and has no rights. The result: It is allowed to consume him as a resource, which
means to kill him. The European Court opposed a pioneering decision to this „Culture
of death”, in its judgement Brüstle against Greenpeace. It denied the possibility to
patent embryonic stem cells for scientific research because every human ovum from the
state of being fertilized is a human embryo. That is why a procedure which requires the
destruction of the embryo is not patentable.24
As far as the Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is concerned: It allows to
examine embryos produced in the laboratory with regard to certain dispositions for
disease or disabilities and to exclude them from being transferred into a uterus in case of
positive findings. So, the PGD opens the door to a deadly selection of undesired
embryos. In the meanwhile it is permitted in many countries. When legalized in
Germany on 7th of July, 2011, the „Culture of death“ used especially many magic hoods
to hide the objective of the deadly selection. First of all they used the magic hood called
“Ethics of helping“.25 The definition of PGD the advocates of the legalization used
already masks its core: the deadly selection. The PGD, they say, is „an instrument in the
scope of artificial insemination which gives information about diseases of the fertilized
ovum before it is implanted into the uterus“.26 It is a modern medical diagnosis to
reduce severe health risks.27 It gives parents with inherent genetic defects the
opportunity to “have a healthy baby“.28 That is why the legislative does not have the
right to refuse the couples in question to realize a PGD because we do not “just
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
in: Zeitschrift für evangelische Ethik, 45. Jg. (2001), S. 230ff.
Brigitte Zypries, Vom Zeugen und Erzeugen. Verfassungsrechtliche und rechtspolitische Fragen der
Bioethik, Vortrag an der Humboldt-Universität in Berlin am 29.10.2003, Manuskript S. 6.
Volker Gerhardt, Der Embryo ist kein Diskurspartner, Interview mit der Welt vom 5.7.2001.
Wolfgang Kersting, Hantiert, wenn es euch frei macht, in: FAZ vom17.3.2001.
Reinhard Merkel, Rechte für Embryonen?, in: Christian Geyer, Hrsg., Biopolitik, Frankfurt 2001, S.
64.
EuGH, Urteil vom 18.10.2011, C-34/10. Dazu Klaus Ferdinand Gärditz, Der Europäische Gerichtshof
als Hüter der Menschenwürde: Embryonenschutz und Stammzellforschung, in: Manfred
Spieker/Christian Hillgruber/Klaus Ferdinand Gärditz, Die Würde des Embryos. Ethische und
rechtliche Probleme der Präimplantationsdiagnostik und der embryonalen Stammzellforschung,
Paderborn 2012, S. 87ff.
Peter Hintze in den Bundestagsdebatten am 14.4. und 7.7.2011, in: Plenarprotokoll 17/105, S. 11948f.
und Plenarprotokoll 17/120, S. 13876.
Ulrike Flach in der Bundestagsdebatte am 14.4.2011, in: Plenarprotokoll 17/105, S. 11945.
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger in der Bundestagsdebatte am 17.4.2011, in: Plenarprotokoll
17/105, S. 11970.
So die Begründung des Gesetzentwurfs zur Legalisierung, in: Bundestagsdrucksache 17/5451, S. 8.
8
(tolerate) other forms of suffering but treat them und find therapies against them“.29 The
ethics of helping or curing ignores the prize we have to pay for this “diagnosis”: The
deadly selection of the embryos. It ignores the constitutional protection which grants
every embryo after conception the warranty of human dignity, the right to live and the
prohibition of discrimination.
Since 1970, also the prenatal diagnostics (PND) has made a development full of lingual
magic hoods which has changed the experience of women with regard to their
pregnancy.30 About two thirds of the pregnant women accept, according to an inquiry of
the German Centre of health information, PND because they suppose that the PND
contributes to having a healthy baby.31 Today, they do not accept their child until the
PND has certificated that their child is medically inconspicuous. They suppress their
natural tendency to be happy and to protect the child. So, they are manœuvring
themselves into a hardly tolerable distance to their pregnancy and to their own child. “A
life under the delusion of optimization. From the beginning. At any cost. Especially
parents feel this pressure. They shall be perfect parents of perfect children“.32 The PND
shall avert dangers for life and health of mother and child. Not uncommonly, it „serves
a eugenic mentality“.33 Often, the only possibility to avert dangers for the health of the
child is his abortion. They generally hide that fact behind terms like prevention,
prophylactic measures, and avoidance of genetic anomalies or induced birth.34 It is not
allowed to talk about abortion. That is why an abortion after PND because of a severe
disability of the embryo in the 23rd pregnancy week must be called delivery, according
to a judgement of the German Federal Employment Court from the 15th of December
2005. The court agreed with a mother who had brought a suit against the dismissal by
her employer with the argument, inducing a premature labour was a “delivery”.35 That
is why she had the right to receive maternal protection and, in consequence, protection
against dismissal. The employer referred to the fact that an abortion was no delivery and
so the dismissal was legal. The court forced him to revoke the dismissal.
V. The Culture of life
„Walk as children of light!“ in order to create a cultural change. This invitation is the
title of the final paragraph in the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae which is dedicated to the
Culture of life. Of course, at the beginning of this renovation we have to unmask the
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
Carola Reimann und Ursula von der Leyen in der Bundestagsdebatte am 7.7.2011, in: Plenarprotokoll
17/120, S. 13879 und 13909.
Manfred Spieker, Von der zertifizierten Geburt zur eugenischen Gesellschaft, in: Imago Hominis, 19.
Jg. (2012), S. 261ff.
Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung, Schwangerschaftserleben und Pränataldiagnostik.
Repräsentative Befragung Schwangerer zum Thema Pränataldiagnostik, Köln (2006), S. 41.
Monika Hey, Mein gläserner Bauch. Wie die Pränataldiagnostik unser Verhältnis zum Leben
verändert, München 2012, S. 14.
Johannes Paul II., Evangelium Vitae 63.
Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Genetische Beratung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Klientenwünschen und
gesellschaftlichem Erwartungsdruck, in: Dies., Hrsg., Welche Gesundheit wollen wir?, Dilemmata des
medizintechnischen Fortschritts, Frankfurt( 1995), S. 124.
Bundesarbeitsgericht 2 AZR 462/04 vom 15.12.2005.
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magic hoods of the “Culture of death”. But then further steps must follow. The fight
between a „Culture of death“ and the Culture of life must “develop a deep, critical
sense“. It is an illusion “to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do
not help the young to accept and experience sexuality and love and the whole of life
according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.“ 36 If the banalisation
of sexuality, against which Paul VI. in Humanae Vitae had already warned, is at the
beginning of disregarding unborn life and at the beginning of a „Culture of death“, then
the testimony of the beauty and richness of sexuality as a mutual complete gift, the
observance of the biological laws which are inscribed into the human person, the
education of natural methods of conception regulation and the discovery of the
coherence between charity and truth stand at the beginning of the Culture of life. The
self-devotion, not the self-destination is the key to achieve a succeeding life. That is
valid not only for married couples. Jesus Christ lived that in exemplary manner 2000
years ago. In the Eucharist it becomes present every day. That is what the Council
underlined in Gaudium et Spes 24. For John Paul II. and Benedict XVI. this truth was
the guide of their Pontificate. And also for Pope Francis, in his still young Pontificate.
“Don´t be afraid!“ to proclaim that. This invitation by which John Paul at the beginning
of his Pontificate encouraged the Christians to open the doors for Christ, still is valid,
and especially for Bishops and their Media Officers and Spokespeople.
36
Johannes Paul II., Evangelium Vitae 97.
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